When I was girding up my loins to doubt this,
I found out that Tannenwald in this instance was a
man's name.
Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system
in the distribution; so the gender of each must be
learned separately and by heart. There is no other way.
To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book.
In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has.
Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip,
and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it
looks in print - I translate this from a conversation
in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:
"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?
"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen.
"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English
maiden?
"Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera."
To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds
are female, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless,
dogs are male, cats are female - tomcats included, of course;
a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet,
and body are of the male sex, and his head is male
or neuter according to the word selected to signify it,
and NOT according to the sex of the individual who wears
it - for in Germany all the women either male heads or
sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast,
hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair,
ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience
haven't any sex at all. The inventor of the language
probably got what he knew about a conscience from hearsay.
Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in
Germany a man may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look
into the matter closely, he is bound to have his doubts;
he finds that in sober truth he is a most ridiculous mixture;
and if he ends by trying to comfort himself with the
thought that he can at least depend on a third of this
mess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second
thought will quickly remind him that in this respect
he is no better off than any woman or cow in the land.
In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor
of the language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib)
is not - which is unfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex;
she is neuter; so, according to the grammar, a fish
is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife is neither.
To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description;
that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse.
A German speaks of an Englishman as the ENGLAENDER; to change
the sex, he adds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman
- ENGLAENDERINN.
